


Pick a Star on the Dark Horizon and Follow the Light

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Diana fic, F/M, Post-Movie, wondertrev
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 13:19:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11231820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: Post-movie, Diana/WonderTrev feels. “Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of all is that Diana doesn’t really learn about Steve Trevor’s life until after his death.”





	Pick a Star on the Dark Horizon and Follow the Light

_A/N: Definitely movie canon only, as I’m not super familiar with the comics, but I couldn’t not write this. Please forgive if there’s anything wildly OOC._

_Also, big props to @blueincandescence, who made[this amazing post](http://blueincandescence.tumblr.com/post/161468672260/steve-trevor-childhood) about what Steve’s childhood might have looked like, which was an immense help in kicking off my own research._

_Title from “[The Call](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dtxbe1u6joC0&t=NDllN2JmOGUwZmZiMzcwY2QyYzg2ZmMyMGNmNTdjYWI3ZjgwZmU5YixYQmlsc29hVw%3D%3D&b=t%3AiAw4tJIAalN1OvhWtUFPsQ&p=http%3A%2F%2Ftheshipsfirstmate.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161958349934%2Fwonder-woman-fic-pick-a-star-on-the-dark-horizon&m=1)” by Regina Spektor._

**Pick a Star on the Dark Horizon and Follow the Light**

Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of all is that Diana doesn’t really learn about Steve Trevor’s life until after his death.

The details come in rapid, heartrending bursts in the weeks following the end of the war, but the dull ache in her chest is ever-present. There’s not a morning that she rises that she doesn’t think about his head on the pillow next to hers, not a night that she lies down to rest that she doesn’t long for his solid weight on the mattress beside her.

_She had teased him, that night in Veld. They’d been halfway through disrobing, lips only parting when it became physically necessary, and she had smiled against his mouth, recalling something he told her on their first night together._

_“So, Steve Trevor, this is what you meant when you said you’ve slept with women.”_

_His cheeks flushed red but it only made his eyes look bluer when they flicked back up at her. “Like I said, it’s something of a euphemism.”_

_“You’ve slept with many women?” Jealousy, like some kind of acid, began to creep up her throat at the thought, and she was ashamed by the selfish, and hypocritical, impulse._

_“Not_ many _.” He smirked, and that burn hit her lower, making her fingertips flex against his bare chest. “And definitely none like you, Diana.”_

_Empirically, she knew it was the truth, but the way he said her name, soft like the flickering candlelight, reverent like a prayer, made her eyes slip closed. When she raised her head to the sky on instinct, his lips traced down her throat and across her clavicle and she lost herself in the flood of sensation. The only rational thought that remained in her mind was how foolish it would be to waste another moment of their precious time together._

Sammy, Charlie, and Chief stay in London for longer than Diana expects, given their various lines of work. They call it “celebrating the spoils of war,” but their tone isn’t cheerful, grim visages incongruous with the happy, patriotic relief displayed proudly across the city. There’s no joy in a victory that came with so great a loss.

They spend most nights drinking too much at seedy establishments, and most nights Diana joins them, watching as they trade liquor for blood and listening as they tell her their most bombastic tales of Steve Trevor.

Charlie drains his glass and waves at the bar, forgetting that he’s already ordered another. “I once saw ‘im flip a tank with two perfectly-timed shots.”

Sammy’s hat is cocked too far to the side, and it tips further when he swings around to face her. Since Steve’s death, he’s been drinking his doubles like Charlie does, fast and without any kind of relish. “Not as impressive as the way you do it, my dear.”

“I once saw him row a sinking canoe upstream for 12 miles,” Chief mumbles with a smirk that makes its way around the table.

“I once saw him French kiss a duchess.”

“I tho’ it was a czarina.”

“It was both.” Etta sets down a tray in the middle of the table and everyone takes their next round with a mumble of woozy thanks. “And before anyone else goes blaspheming, remember, both were for a mission, only one was engaged, and, somewhat mercifully, they were not in the same night.”

“He was a legend with the ladies,” Sammy declares with a lecherous smirk that twitches in an odd way when it lands on her. “ _Bien sur,_ none like you, Diana darling.”

“Yes,” she admits. “He told me that.” Everyone but Charlie lets out that polite little laugh that tells her she’s said something not quite right.

“S’a a good thing he did,” the Scotsman burps. “An’ not just because you’re a goddess or wha’ever. S’important to say things that need to be said.”

Charlie’s sudden solemnity seems to draw the melancholy out of the others and soon, without realizing, they’re all looking at her with the same sad eyes.

“It’s true.” Etta says softly, after a long moment, and Diana’s heart twists again at the tears in her voice. “You never know when it’s your last good chance.”

She and Sammy haul Charlie home not long after that, and Diana’s left at the table with Chief and a half-full glass of what she knows to be whiskey, but doesn’t like any better as she becomes more familiar. He’s always the quietest of the bunch, and since Steve’s death, that’s only fueled her suspicion that he might have the most to tell her. 

Thankfully, she doesn’t have to wait very long. Perhaps he’s already learned his lesson about saying things that need to be said. 

“When Steve sent for me, the first thing I asked was why in the hell he was so eager to get to the front of the war.” Chief’s candor makes her grin, but his next statement makes her stomach drop. “He told me about you.”

“I promised to get him off the island, he promised to take me to Ares.” Diana remembers, with a cold twist of regret. How eager she had been to get to the front, how stupidly naive about the ways of war.

“No, he told me about _you_ ,” the man corrects. “About where you came from, how you fought, how you saved him. He said you were like nothing he’d ever seen.”

Surprise and heartbreak flood her chest at the admission, and a memory it conjures. “He said the same thing about the war.”

Chief just carries on with his tale, unaware of her inner turmoil. “He also told me he got some of your people killed. Said he owed you.”

“No.” She sucks in a breath. “No, that wasn’t his fault.” Diana recalls the words Steve told her on the beach, the look in his eyes when she was pleading with the gods for Antiope’s life. “He was one of the good guys.”

“He said that?” The man lifts his head to meet her gaze, and she can see his question is a serious one. “I didn’t know he still believed there were good guys.”

Diana realizes that Chief had known a different side of Steve entirely, one it seems he hardly ever showed. She thinks it’s probably the same one that had pleaded for her help on the air tower that night, the one who tried to warn her how terrible a world it would be it everyone only got what they deserved.

“He _was_ good,” she insists, like she would if he were here, if she could hold his face in her hands so he’d see the truth in her eyes. “He was noble and brave and gave his life to save so many. What more can a man do, to be good?” Chief just nods, looking at her like she’s said more about herself than Steve with the insistent, almost frantic words.

“He used to say that bravery is decided by whoever’s in power, but loyalty is the measure of a man,” he recalls. “And he was the most loyal man I’ve ever known.”

From the corner of her eye, Diana sees the barkeep give the signal to clear out. It makes her chest ache, like she’s leaving something behind.

_“My father was a soldier, too,” Steve had revealed, stretching across her to lay his watch on the bedside table. He set the memento down, but didn’t pull his body back to his side of the undersized inn bed, crowding her with a heavy arm draped across her ribcage and a smile pressed to her collarbone. She wanted him again, but she also wanted to know more._

_“Who did he fight for?”_

_This question made him stiffen in her arms, and she almost regretted it. When he looked up to meet her eyes, she saw them swirling with pride and pain. “7th Cavalry, United States Army,”_

_“And then, when the war was over, he had breakfast and babies?”_

_The corners of his mouth twitched at that, despite the anguish she could see etched across his face. “Not exactly. He had the babies, sure, but the war never really ended.” It had been so clear to her then, why Steve’s belief in Ares’ power consisted solely of the trust he was placing in her. “See, Sergeant Charles Trevor was a career soldier, and he fought for what he believed in… Eventually, it killed him.”_

_Diana’s heart clenched painfully at the thought of the devastation that must have caused him as a younger man, a boy even. She knew the soldier in front of her could take care of himself, but she found herself wanting to protect him and fight at his side in almost equal measure._

_Her most immediate desire, however, had been putting that blissful expression back on his beautiful face. “What do you believe in, Steve Trevor?”_

_He had taken a deep breath in then, and pursed his lips, like he was battling the lasso of Hephaestus. But when he exhaled, his whole body loosened, and he looked up at her with freedom on his face. “I believe in love.”_

She has tea with Etta one day, not long after her talk with Chief, and in between cups, the secretary asks her to go to a place called Ohio, and meet Steve’s mother.

“I’ve got his uniform out of storage,” she says by way of explanation, as Diana tries to swallow around the bite of finger sandwich that’s suddenly stuck in her throat. “He never gave them her address, because, well, counterintelligence and all that. So they sent the Medal of Honor and Victoria Cross to his London office.”

Etta digs into her purse and pulls out a piece of bronze with a red and green ribbon, handing it over for Diana to see. “The French sent over a Croix du Guerre as well, which is nice of them, I suppose. So I’ve uh…I’ve got those too.”

“What does any of this have to do with Steve’s mother?” Diana’s stuck on the idea, one that hadn’t occurred to her until now, that there might be a woman, out there in the world of men, who understands what it is to miss him like this. Perhaps even more.

“Well, it’s a military tradition of sorts,” the secretary explains. “Returning a fallen soldier’s honors to his next of kin. A wife or a mother, usually. Don’t your people…”

“We don’t have marriage.” Diana remembers Steve telling her about standing in front of a judge, about breakfast and reading the newspaper and promising each other forever. “And I was the only Amazon to have an earthly mother.”

“Who, by the way, I would _love_ to meet someday,” Etta muses, so cheerfully that Diana almost forgets it’s an impossibility, turning over the spiked medal in her hands and seeing the glint off of his family name.

“This is how the world of men celebrates the deaths of their bravest.” It’s not really a question, but Etta nods. “Parades and confetti and scraps of bronze tied up with bows.”

“It’s all very ceremonial,” Etta agrees at first, before sucking a breath in through her teeth. “But it’s not really about celebrating how he died, is it? They’re medals for honor and bravery, selflessness in the line of duty. It’s more about how he lived.”

With each day they spend together, Diana comes to see more and more of the reasons that Steve trusted the secretary among his closest counterparts. And friends too, Diana muses. She’s never had a friend like Etta Candy.

“Anyway,” the woman continues. “Won’t be a long trip, we’ll be back before the new year. London at the holidays was Steve’s favorite. Ridiculous man, always loved the snow.”

There’s so much still to learn about Steve Trevor, Diana feels a rush of nostalgic relief to hear something she already knows. That night, she dreams of snowflakes getting stuck in his eyelashes.

It’s a long boat ride to America, much longer than their trip from Themyscira. Perhaps it just feels that way without his company. It’s gloomy and freezing for the entirety of their journey and on the fourth day, she’s just about to go stir-crazy in the shared state room when Etta digs into her bag and shoves a box wrapped in red paper into her hands.

“Happy early Christmas, Diana.”

She’s aware of the significance of the impending Pagan holiday, but confused all the same by her friend’s gesture.

“No, Etta, I cannot accept this.” It seems right to protest, though she knows the woman well enough by now to understand it won’t work. “I did not get you anything in return.”

“It’s gift enough, not to have to this make this trip alone.” The sincere words are framed with a sad smile. “Besides, to be honest, I didn’t really get it for you. It’s, um – it’s Steve’s present.”

Diana’s vision blurs and her heads lists to the side, unable to see past his name written on the tag, barely hearing as the other woman explains, “I thought I might give it to his mother, but really, you should have it.”

She peels back the paper and opens the small box. Inside, nestled in tissue, is a blown glass figure, delicate and intricate and beautiful.

“We always joked about getting an office Christmas tree,” Etta explains, “but we usually weren’t in one place long enough to make things festive.”

It’s a woman, dressed in a flowing gown, with wings lIke Hermes’ blossoming from her back. A simple thing, really, but it takes her breath away.

“It’s fitting in a way, isn’t it?” Etta muses when Diana remains silent. “You did pluck him from the ocean, after all.”

_“Angel…” Steve’s voice came almost as a whisper, but filled the silence of the room in Veld. They were tangled up in each other, catching their breaths for the third or fourth time since he shut the door behind him. “I think you must be an angel.”_

_“You know that I’m not.” Their faces rested so close on the pillow that her lips nearly brushed his as she spoke. “I told you, Zeus–”_

_“I know, I know, you’re the greatest piece of pottery in human history.” This time he was teasing her, but as he nuzzled at her nose, warm hand running up and down her side, she found she doesn’t mind at all. “But hear me out, okay? You come from the heavens. You pull me out of the sea, save my life. You protect humankind. Sounds like an angel to me.”_

_She could have corrected him again, but she decided to kiss him instead. The hours were ticking away on his father’s watch and soon it would be time to fight again._

When their feet finally touch land in New York City, there’s barely time to enjoy it. Next up is a train to Cleveland and then a long ride to the Trevor family farm.

Diana knocks at the front door first, impatient for their journey to see its purpose through, and annoyed at the nerves that have begun fluttering around her stomach. But when it swings open, Etta has to take the lead. Diana freezes in her tracks, because another thing she never knew about Steve Trevor is that he got his eyes from his mother.

“Mrs. Trevor…” Etta begins, but instead of a reply, she gets wrapped up in a bear hug. Diana expects the bitter kind of breakdown that she’s watched for weeks as ships came back to harbor with less men than they departed. But there’s a soft smile on the woman’s face that makes her tears look something less than tragic.

“It’s good to see you again, Etta.” She even sounds a little like Steve, the same dialect, same warmth. “Really, it is.”

“I’m sorry it has to be like this.” There are tears in Etta’s voice too as she nods, stepping inside at the other woman’s insistence before turning back to the door. “Diana, this is Sarah Trevor. Mrs. Trevor, this is–”  

“Diana.” She extends a hand, which Steve’s mother shakes with the same smile and only the slightest hesitation. “Diana Prince.”

It’s the name she’d given Etta a week or two earlier, when the secretary explained how she’d need a verifiable identity in order to do things like take a boat across the Atlantic. She’s not sure why she sticks with the moniker at first, until she realizes it’s one of the things she’ll always be able to remember about Steve Trevor, how he sounded when he said her name.

“It’s nice to meet you, Diana.” The woman releases her hand with a quick squeeze, and then turns back. “And Etta, please, I’ve told you. Call me Sarah.”

“I’m sorry… for your loss.” Diana’s heard the stilted words passed back and forth amongst strangers since the end of the war. It seems to be what one says under the circumstances, and somehow, suddenly, it becomes the only thing she can find within her own grief. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Steve’s mother turns back to her then, and gives her a long, discerning look. It’s almost too much to bear. She’s seen those eyes in her dreams almost every night since the war ended, she’d know them anywhere. “My dear, that’s kind of you to say but it’s certainly unnecessary.”

“I should have stopped him.” Now she can’t seem to turn the words off. She’s revisited that night a thousand times in her mind, futilely perfecting a thousand different strategies where Steve got to live. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize what he was planning and I should have… I should have stopped him.”

“ _Diana_ –” Etta’s right to warn her, she’s spinning out a little and getting dangerously close to details she shouldn’t be sharing. But Sarah Trevor just shakes her head with a smile and takes Diana’s hands in her own.

“See now, if you knew my Stevie at all, then you know there wasn’t going to be any stopping him.” It’s the truth, and Diana takes what feels like her first deep breath in months, trying to smile back.

She follows his mother’s eyes over to the fireplace, where there are a few framed photographs displayed on the mantle. One is the same picture from the victory parade in London, Steve grinning next to his plane. Diana battles the urge to cross the room and run her fingers over it as Sarah continues.

“Mothers of soldiers spend their lives dreading the call.” Diana thinks briefly of her own mother, remembers Hippolyta’s words about her greatest joy and sorrow. “Mothers of spies just hope they’ll be lucky enough to get one.”

_“I should have stopped him…”_

Etta mercifully saves her from her reverie, interrupting cautiously. “So, Sarah, how’s the farm been?”

“Doing pretty well,” she answers, without turning to face the question. “We were back to top yield last summer, which is a good sign.”

Diana crosses to the window, where a half-melted white candle sits in a dish on the sill. She can see for what seems like miles across the rows of tilled earth, frozen and capped with white.

“Winter wheat,” Steve’s mother explains behind her. “Not much to look at until springtime. My brother-in-law runs the farm and the mill, his house is across the field.”

“That is important work.” Diana turns back to see she’s being studied by both women in the room. “Something to be proud of.”

“Stevie always was,” Sarah nods, joining Diana at the window. Her hair is more grey than brown and the lines on her face might be from worry or laughter, but she’s undoubtedly beautiful. Diana can’t help but look for Steve in every part of her. “He’d ride his bike a half-mile across the way every morning before the sun came up, work the fields after school, and ride back at sunset.”

“In the summertime, when it was time to cut, he’d be over there all day long,” she continues, grinning blindly at the glass, at the memories of time long past. “I wouldn’t be able to see him across the field, the wheat was so high. But I could always hear him on his way home. He’d stand up on the pedals and stretch his arms out, calling to me as he got closer, _‘Mom! I’m on the wind!’_ ”

Diana smiles and turns back to the mantle with her head swirling in a hundred different directions. Next to Steve’s army photo is a different man in uniform, a man she recognizes immediately, even though she’s never seen him before.

“My boy was born and bred to be soldier, but I always knew he’d be a hero,” his mother recalls, when she sees what’s drawn Diana’s attention. “He loved frontiersman, pirate kings, dime novel detectives… But his biggest inspiration of all was–”

_“Sergeant Charles Trevor.”_ Sarah falters only slightly when the name leaves Diana’s lips and then she blinks, looking at her like she’s seeing her anew, nodding softly in confirmation.

Diana looks again at the photo on the mantle. Steve may have gotten his eyes from his mother, but the crinkle in his brow, the good-natured smirk, and the debonair jawline were all from this man, standing proud with a rifle strapped across his back. _He fought for what he believed in,_ she remembers. _Eventually, it killed him._

“One day, Charles came back early from the front, beat all to hell.” Sarah’s voice changes tone then, and when Diana looks up, she’s watching the front door. “He had ridden all the way home from South Dakota on his own, and it us took a while to put together what had happened. My little boy didn’t say a word for a whole two weeks when he found out that his daddy was a deserter.”

The Amazons don’t speak such a word, but having witnessed the horrors of war in the world of man firsthand, Diana thinks she may be forming a new perspective on military obedience.  

“Stevie didn’t understand what happened at Wounded Knee until some time later, and by then, his father had already given up on this world.” Diana thinks of Steve’s sad eyes, then of Chief’s words. It seems every death in the world of man is more tragic than the next. “The guilt derailed Charles for good, but it only pushed Stevie forward. He was always saying, ‘If you see something wrong happening in the world, you can do nothing, or you can do something.’”

“He said his father taught him that.” Despite what Steve had told her the night they met, Diana still can’t imagine him taking the passive way out of any conflict. “He couldn’t do nothing.”

“His father may have taught him the difference, but my boy never did ‘nothing’ a day in his life.” Sarah tells them with conviction that’s laced with a little exasperation. “He came home from his first day of secondary school with a fat lip and a story about a cripple boy who was getting picked on. Then it was a tribe that needed help, then an army that needed guidance, then a world that needed saving.”

“He was a _hero_ ,” Diana tells her, certain that a woman as bright as Sarah Trevor must surely know it by now. “He was a great man, and I…”

It’s almost the first time she says it aloud, and she hears Etta swallow a gasp. “I’m sorry every day that he’s gone.”

If Steve’s mother senses the truth that’s threatened to spill out of her, she doesn’t let on. In fact, she just smiles again, letting Diana see the best of him in her likeness. “Thank you dear,” she says, reaching up to brush away an errant hair. “But he’s not gone. The wheat will grow high next summer, and I’ll hear him from across the field. He’s on the wind.”

Diana reaches up to touch at the wet corners of her eyes then, and when the sleeve of her jacket pulls down a little, something catches Sarah’s eyes. _Oh_. Of course.

“You should have this,” Diana fiddles with the clasp, her wrist instantly feeling more vulnerable without the timepiece or her gauntlets. “He told me about it, gave it to me to keep safe, just before…”

Her words and movements stop with a gentle hand that closes her palm around the watch, pressing it back towards her chest. It brings back a memory so strong, Diana’s knees almost buckle.

“If he gave it to you, dear, then he meant for you to have it,” Steve’s mother assures her with a meaningful look. “My son didn’t part easily with the things that he loved.”

_“Is it always this quiet when it snows?” It was in the space between very late night and very early morning when she sat halfway up to pull back the curtains and look out the window at the town square, which appeared far too serene for the war zone it had been just hours earlier. “Does it always feel there isn’t a soul around for miles?”_

_“Is it quiet?” Steve was prone on the bed, dozing off but still grabbing for any part of her he could reach. When she looked back at him, the biggest grin split across his face. “I can’t hear anything over my heart pounding in my ears.”_

_Diana flopped back down beside him with a full-bodied laugh that tapered off when she pressed her forehead to his. “Is it always like this?”_

_“When it snows?” She had nodded in agreement, despite the fact that her eyes were telling him something else entirely. In return, his told her everything she needed to know. He couldn’t promise her anything but one night, they both knew that. But maybe it was enough that he wanted to._

_“It could be.” Steve’s smile matched her own and so she pressed them together, swiping her tongue across his lower lip. She didn’t ever want to stop teasing him, didn’t ever want to stop tasting him. But she knew the sun would be rising soon._

_“And what happens in the morning?”_

_“In the morning…” he started softly, and she didn’t miss the way his gaze flickered dark before settling back on her. Time was nearly up. “In the morning, we have breakfast, and we read the newspaper, and then–”_

_She almost wanted him to lie to her, but she knew that he wouldn’t. “Then it’s back to the war.”_

The sun is setting over the farmhouse in the distance when they step back outside, leaving Mrs. Trevor with another firm hug apiece and a promise to return someday that Diana hopes isn’t an empty one.

As they walk toward the waiting car, her footsteps slow, physically unwilling to leave this place that has memories of Steve in its bones, this place that had been the reason for so much of who he was. For miles around her, the fields are draped in white, but Diana can picture them in the summertime, golden grain high enough that Sarah Trevor would barely be able to spot her son’s hair – the color of chaff – over the tops of the stalks.

A cold breeze picks up and Diana’s hit with a feeling so familiar, she can’t help but close her eyes and turn her head towards the sky. She’s done this countless times before, but it’s never felt like it does this time, and she knows why. 

Time will pass, and things will change, but Steve will always be with her. For the next hundred years, and then on after that. He’s on the wind.

 

* * *

 

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